From solar bike paths to the Tesla battery, 2015’s energy innovations show that we can power the world cleanly, if we just make the effort.

Given that we’ll need 50% more energy by 2050–and that, because of climate change, most of that energy will need to be “clean”–it was heartening to see so much energy innovation in 2015. Promising technologies, like small hydro and wave power, got off the ground. There were lots of efforts to expand access to renewables in developing countries. And plenty of new services emerged to change the way we store, buy and sell power

Meanwhile, solar started to appear in more places: on bike paths, roadside barriers, and windows, to name a few examples. These projects showed that meeting the twin demands of global warming and global energy access is possible, even if we’ll have to rely on fossil fuels for a few years yet.